In order to keep the novel reading experience clean, periodically, I’ll collect aside posts here and delete them from the actual feed. Newest first, oldest last approach.
Nov-Jan
…Guess who deleted all her Asides before archiving them? This is why you should work on site edits with a headache.
October 30, 2016 – Thank you!
Just a quick note to tell you guys how much I love you! I’m still really bad at making videos with my face in them, but luckily, my cat came along and informed me I was over thinking it. Just know that I love you all, and I’m so happy you’re reading! I never expected anyone to actually follow this so quickly. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning, thank you SO MUCH!
October 28, 2016 – Banner!
I MADE A BANNER!
<a href=”http://www.insearchofasylum.wordpress.com”><img src=”http://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/2033/uA95Zx.jpg” alt=”Click to read Asylum” width=”1100″ height=”233″ border=”0″ /></a>
Feel free to copy the code above and spread the word! Made at Bannerfans.com, should any of you be in similar need.
Sept 26, 2016 – Timezone fixed
Just a minor update, time zone is fixed. Apparently, I set it right for Raevenly Writes, but never thought to check for this site. Updates should drop at Midnight, Eastern Standard time now.
Sept 25, 2016 – T-minus
Tomorrow is the big day! At midnight tonight (if I’ve set things up right), the week-long release party begins! Asylum will update normally on Saturdays, but we’re just too excited to wait. So, from now until Saturday’s update, we’ll be posting a piece of the prologue every day. That’s right, we’re kicking things off with nearly a solid week of updates! Woohoo! And double woohoo! My friend Zabet finished the banner today, so we get to open things up with a spiffy new store front! So many exclamation points! Such excite! Much wow!
Seriously, I’m really thrilled to be writing this. The big day is finally here. I am terrified and overjoyed and kinda glad that it’ll all be over in a few short hours. For everyone who’s been waiting since the beginning of Raevenly Writes, this is finally it guys. The big roller coaster drop. For everyone just now joining us, welcome to the party! *throws confetti*
Sept 12, 2016 Myths and Movie magic
Work on the next video is coming along nicely. I have to admit, I’m having flashbacks to my 8th grade power point presentation, and every time I listen to the playback to get the timing right, the background noise seems louder and louder. I think the next experiment will be in sound dampening. I’ve read that recording in a closet helps, because the clothes absorb echo. I’ve also read that the mics that come standard on a computer are crap, so maybe I need to ask for a microphone for Christmas.
But these are all my problems. For those of you eager for more Asylum, the video I’m working on is a (very abbreviated) version of the one Seth tells here. Be forewarned: the Raevenly Writes blog is rampant with potential spoilers, though I always did try to avoid such things. The linked entry is ok, but if you go otherwise wandering, do so with caution.
Sept 09/2016 – Minor edits
The search for video editing software continues. Filmora was easy to use, but had that big ol water mark on its free version. Windows movie maker, like everything else windows does, is almost intuitive, but not quite. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it. But I did get a non-water marked version of the first pri’mn video out of it, so hooray for that.
Work continues on the next video. Scripting is surprisingly hard to do. Like, I know what I want to say, but I’m sooooo much better with the written word than spoken. Which is funny, because my written style is very rambly/conversational, but for an actual recording of my voice? I prefer to keep it brief/clinical. Go figure.
August 08, 2016 – What a Week!
And by week, I mean two. It’s been one of THOSE weeks, where one just blends seamlessly into the other in a mad wash of stress and sleeplessness. Work, family, and various other drama has left me with little time for edits.
I did, however, spend an awesome morning with one of my best friends making banners for the site. So woo for that!
I also sent the prologue out to my dad, to get a completely “dry” perspective. It’s not his genre, I’ve told him nothing about it, and he still wants to read more, so I’m pretty happy about that. I’ve needed a good shot of confidence, and that was just the ticket.
Today starts my vacation (from work), so I plan to get some videos up and/or queued, and queue up the first month or so of Asylum. Yup. Finally doing it. Scared to death. I’m telling myself there’s still time to make changes if I want to, but it’s still scary as hell.
So I’m going to distract myself with birthday wishes for my long time friend and beta reader, J. Thanks for all you do, and many happy returns dear!
Aug 11, 2016 – Randomness
Been watching a lot of Disney on Youtube lately, mostly in other languages (because the Beast in French is pretty much the hottest thing there is). That, of course, got me thinking about the myriad of languages Seth, Naj, Kain, and other supremely old/well traveled characters must speak. The immediate answer I got was a dry “My Spanish is rusty, but Italian is better anyways,” from Seth, whose French is flawless (according to him). Of course, since everyone gets filtered through yours truly, that poses a bit of a problem, but it’s fun to realize little things, like Seth and Jean most likely conversing entirely in French.
In editing news, I’m still stuck on the chapter of blah that I can’t get past. After that, things move along very very quickly, so on the one hand I want quite badly to just skip it, but on the other…. I really need to get it done. 
Aug 07, 2016 – Video Ideas
This is as much a to-do list as it is a blog post. 😛 I’ve been kicking around ideas for more video posts. I’d like to get some up between now and the end of September: hoping for four, holding myself to at least two. So what would you guys like to see? I’ve got one language “lesson” planned out for sure, maybe two if it winds up being too long for one. I know in other fantasy books I’ve read, that’s been my biggest wish. Just a “how the heck do you pronounce that?” Any other ideas you guys have from books you’ve read would be muchly appreciated. 🙂
Aug 05, 2016 – Ever Closer
August! Just two months away from October! I’m so excited and terrified I can’t stand it! I’m so ready and so NOT ready and I just want to get it over with and be posting already but I want to keep a nice buffer and just GHAAA! All the feels.
Autumn is usually a good writing time for me. The nonsense of summer is dying down, excitement for NaNo is revving up, and the nonsense of “The Holiday Season” is at a minimum. On the one hand, this is great for productivity, on the other, I almost always want to start something new right about now. But edits on Asylum are slowly making progress. We’ve been taking turns reading chapters aloud to each other, which has done WONDERS for catching odd things. When you’ve read over the text as much as we have, it all starts to blur together. Hearing it makes it real again, and is breathing new life into the editing process.
I’ve been putting off making more videos, mostly because I don’t want to go back again to look over the early chapters and see what content could/should get some air time. Hopefully as the release date draws ever closer, I’ll channel some of this growing nervous energy into being nervous on camera. Since I’ll be nervous anyways. 😛
July 26, 2016 – The more things change
When we were first drafting Asylum, I really had no idea where it was all going.
Three years later, we’re approaching the mid-book/almost climax, and somehow, even though I don’t remember most of what we wrote way back when, the edits are mirroring it (minus the stuff that needed minusing). I do a lot of dreamplay with characters, which I try to limit to relevant things that can only happen in dreams, but even so, it winds up pretty surreal most times. But occasionally it wanders into the silly for a change of pace, and somehow, somehow, I have managed to make the same major character have the same issue with heights in roughly the same chapter, even though the events leading up to this dreamscape are more or less TOTALLY different. The tone of the scene has changed. The characters aren’t the same people they were going into it last time. They don’t have the same relationships they did before. I wasn’t even planning on putting a dream here, but it needed to happen.
And through it all, Seth is still afraid of flying. 😛
July 22, 2016 – Speedbumps
Ugh.
I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping the ball rolling, whether with writing or editing. Yes, taking breaks is important, but only when you need them. When it’s just a matter of convenience or distraction? You’ll thank yourself later if you just keep at it.
I’m hitting the part of the edits that have been “newly” re-written, or in other words, are as naked and untouched as a freshly minted first draft. It’s daft, some of the things I thought were working at the time. So instead of breaking up sections, word choice juggling, basic clarity mop up and so on, it’s back to the overhaul stage with this mess.
Thank god chapter 7 won’t be coming out until like January. 😛
Of course, I had a good thing going, a nice editing groove, and then work threw me a new trainee. It takes A LOT out of me to stand there and talk at someone for 8 hours a night, 5 nights a week. Plus a whole lotta other crap in my personal life happened all at once, and it was all too easy to justify not working on Asylum.
Now I have no idea what I was doing.
All the re-reading and editing had built up a clear picture of the progression in my mind that is gone, gone, gone. So now, after my “well deserved break”, I have more work to do that if I’d just kept plodding along, even at a slower pace.
I say again,
Ugh.
July 10, 2016 – First posts
Yesterday, I scheduled the first posts! *throws confetti*
I waited until today to celebrate, in case I freaked out and took them all back down. 😛
That’s still a possibility, I suppose, but for now, the 5 part prologue is scheduled to post in the last week of September.
We always knew we wanted to launch Asylum in October, since that’s when the story starts (lol), so we’re paving the way with the prologue. Following chapters will be released one part a week (so far), but to kick things off we’re giving you a piece of the prologue every day! Yay! I may or may not get some other goodies up before the official release, so be sure to Follow us so you don’t miss anything. Also, I’ll be setting up the various social media hook ups sometime this month, as soon as I decide whether or not to link it to my author accounts or make Asylum it’s own little corner of the web. Buttons and announcements will follow, once I make up my mind.
First posts! Scheduled! I can’t wait! *more confetti* (WP should totally make a confetti option like they did with the falling snow last winter. For special occasions such as this.)
July 09, 2016 – Keep on keepin’ on
FINALLY finished going back over chapter 2 (which mostly involved a lot of start/stop/go-back-to-ch-1 action) and am ready to advance to chapter 3.
…wish me luck that it moves faster than chapter 2. *crosses fingers*
I’ve been thinking a lot with these re-writes about how much to tell, and how much to leave forever in the dark (at least as far as the main narrative is concerned. I’m always willing to write outtakes and one-offs). Specifically, character pasts. The hows and whys of who someone is are important, to be sure, but what about the whats? Where is the balance between laying ground work and moving on, and driving the reader crazy with wonderings?
I still don’t have an answer. I’m kinda beginning to suspect I won’t, until you the readers start demanding back story. 😛
June 30, 2016 – Making progress
This week has been a lot of “One step forward, two steps back (that are really steps forward, so it’s three steps forward even if it doesn’t feel like it).”
“Sometimes the way forward is often the way back.”
I keep coming to places in the edits where I’ve not established something, not built the world sufficiently, left out MAJOR character details I’ve taken for granted, and so on. The whole thing has kept leading me down and down the rabbit hole, dragging backwards in the chapters until I finally admit what my writing is trying to tell me:
There’s a fine balance in fantasy/sci-fi between overwhelming and under-explaining your world. Certain things your characters might take for granted (and therefor never think about) are foreign to the readers. Trying to sprinkle all that into the already busy front end of a book (who are these people, what are they doing here, and why are they in that handbasket?) makes for a real slurry of pain mixed with beating-your-head-against-the-desk showers, with a high chance of giving-up-and-calling-it-a-day thunderstorms-0ff in the afternoon.
But, it needs to be done, so slowly but surely we’re making our way through the beginning–again–and hopefully will have something acceptable to show for it come October.
June 17, 2016 – Well, this is exciting
Aaaand we’re back! *waves*
Been divvying up what we called chapters during drafting into more manageable chunks. So far, I’ve got 22 posts “ready” to go, and I’ve only queued up through chapter 6.
Currently we’re working on re-drafted chapter 27.
So yeah, I think we’re in good shape as far as having a buffer goes. XD
June 15, 2016 – A pointless update
I feel even sillier than usual writing this, because the site is currently dark. But, new day, new post, new things to track, play with and manage.
Yesterday, I drafted the first two chapters of Asylum as posts, three parts each. That’s a month and a half of posting. It still boggles the mind. We still haven’t decided what day to post on–I’m leaning towards Thursdays, just because they’re my favorite day–but we’re pretty set on the one update a week. We’ve talked about Patreon tiers with access to more and all sorts of nonsense, but for now, getting one day a week seems daunting enough.
June 14 – Going Dark
Gonna take this site off the grid for a few days, while I format some chapters. I’d hate to accidentally release things we’re not quite ready to show off. I’ll be back in a few days.
June 12, 2016 – To Do Today
Today’s goal is first and foremost to get a post up, because I’d really like to have posts on most days of the month to see how I’d like to set up the archives and whatnot. Playing with tags, navigational functions, and so on. Also, it has the advantage of 1)making me feel like I’m actually getting some work done and 2)the whole “write down your goals” thing. I kinda miss blogging every day(ish), so we’ll see how long this keeps up.
June 11, 2016 – Asides
So mostly, I’m taking a break from webmonkeying. I am not a coder. I will never be a coder. What I’m doing right now isn’t even coding, it’s just basic add this organize that never touch the code housekeeping. But it still makes my brain hurt. I am a writer, and any problem I can’t solve by talking my way out of it makes my head hurt.
Also, I wanted to play around with the categories, links, and so on, so I figured I ought to have an actual Aside if I’m going to link to them in the menu bar.
Asides should typically just be author thoughts, status updates, and the like, with little to no bearing on the actual story. At this point, I’m not entirely sure how to pull them out of the main feed, but it’s something I’ll get to. One of the (MANY) themes I tried out had an asides function, and I don’t remember why I opted away from it. Maybe I’ll go back someday, maybe not. Who knows, who cares.
So this is Asylum, under construction. If, by some odd chance, you are following along with my mad updates, first let me apologize. Secondly, let me assure you that proper content is coming, hopefully some time around October. Hang in there, or simply check back later.
June 10, 2016 – Another Test post
This time I’m playing around with navigation tools. Can’t see how previous and next buttons look with only two posts.
June 09, 2016 – Test post
I haven’t blogged in over a year, and I’ve nearly forgotten how. So, in the interest of playing around, I give you, a test post.
In Search of Asylum 
